Many companies collaborate not only internally but also externally in various ways, e.g. B. through file sharing, partner meetings, access to libraries, and much more. This collaboration increases the growth of companies while expanding their network. In this post, we’ll look at how Azure development handles external collaboration through guest user access and how you can invite external users to your tenant’s resources.
What is Azure Active Directory B2B guest access?
Azure AD Business-to-Business (B2B) collaboration is a feature within External Identities that allows organizations to invite guest users to collaborate externally. Organizations can securely share their applications, resources, and services with users from other organizations who are allowed to use their own identity (as authorization) when accessing the tenant’s environment. This feature supports a wide range of identities such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft accounts, and other corporate identities.
How does this work?
This is how it works in Azure development. The sharing organization can send an invitation to external B2B users as a group to an application or tenant’s directory. Once the invitation is sent, the external user’s account is added to Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) as a Guest user. He must then redeem the invitation to complete the process and gain access to shared resources, applications, and/or services.
Since this connection allows external users to use their own identity – be it work, school or social – it becomes easier for users to collaborate externally. In addition, the administrators are relieved of the management of these external accounts. You don’t need to monitor and manage external credentials, sync accounts, or account lifecycles as these are managed by the guest user’s own admins.
Inviting guest users through the Azure AD portal
Before proceeding, make sure you have the correct permission to create users in your tenant directory. Look out for roles like Global Administrator or restricted admin directory roles like Guest Inviter or User Administrator. In anything that comes under Azure development, you must do some testing first by sending an invite to your own external email account.
Guest users can easily be invited through the Azure AD portal. This is also possible via PowerShell.
Sign in to the Azure portal as an Azure AD administrator and go to Azure Active Directory in the left pane.
- Go to Manage> Users
- Select New guest user
Then select Invite Users and enter the requested guest information:
- Name– Guest User’s first and last name.
- E-Mail -A dress e (required) – The guest user’s email address.
- Personal message (optional)- Add a personal welcome message for the guest user.
- Groups- You can add the collaborator to one or more existing groups, or add them later.
- Directory role – If you need Azure AD management permissions for the user, you can add them to an Azure AD role.
Enforce policies for safe guest user collaboration
In our house, we want to ensure our safety by installing safety devices. The same applies if you allow external users to access your resources – you need to ensure that the data is well protected while enjoying B2B collaboration.
Conditional Access policies can also be used to protect corporate applications and data by implementing multi-factor authentication at the tenant level, at the application level, or for specific guest users.
Assignment of an application or service to a guest user
Sign in to the Azure portal as an Azure AD administrator, and then select Enterprise Applications in the left pane.
- Choose New Application.
- Choose Add.
- Under Manage, select Users and groups > Add users > Users and groups.
- Use the search box to search for the guest user, and then select
However, as an admin, it could be tedious to process multiple invitations as requests or needs arise. This feature allows you to delegate collaborator management to app owners so they can directly invite collaborators to any app they want to share.
- Administrators can set up self-service apps and group management.
- Non-admins use their access panel to add collaborators to applications or groups.
Redeem Guest User Invitations
Redeeming the collaboration invitation can be done in a number of ways: via a direct link, via an invitation email, or by signing up on the MyApps page. Revoking guest user access to your organization’s resources can also be done easily.
This Azure AD B2B guest access feature can be of great help for employees in your company to simplify collaboration with partners and external users, reduce the number of sharing of duplicate files or documents while ensuring data security.
Final Thoughts
Follow the same steps as creating the user, but this time select Delete user to complete the process. For full step-by-step instructions, see this Microsoft documentation. Azure development is done professionally by hiring some professional SharePoint consulting company that has experience in Azure services.
Al Rafay Consulting is one such SharePoint consulting company that has dealt with Azure in companies with different working styles, hence having the experience of getting the most out of this.
